Thursday, December 14, 2006

IRAN: STORM WARNING FROM STUDENT PROTESTORS

Tehran, 13 Dec. (AKI) - "Whoever sows wind, will reap a tempest" ran the concluding line of a statement published in Tehran on Wednesday by the Tahkim Vahdat, the main student movement in Iran. Monday's incident, where hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was heckled by students at the controversial Holocaust denial conference, "shows that the universities are alive and do not intend to stay silent at the ruin of the country," Vahdat's leaders said.Dozens of protesters burned pictures of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad crying 'dictator go away', 'death to dictatorship' and threw firecrackers on Monday forcing him to interrupt several times a speech he was giving at the Amir Kabir university in Tehran and leave before scheduled. A thousand students had also protested on Sunday at the university asking the president not to come the following day.The students were protesting against "the shameful conference on the Holocaust which has brought to our country Nazis and racists from around the world and the fact that many activists with students' movements have not been allowed to attend university," said Mehdi Hatefi, an activist with Tahkim Vahdat on Monday.

It was the first time since his landslide victory in June 2005 that Ahmadinejad was challenged in public.

"The shouts of the students when they found themselves face to face with the head of the government wanted to underline the extension of repression here and the incapacity of this government for the benefit of the country, as well as rampant corruption and a disastrous economic situation that have characterised Iran for the 155 months of his rule," the Tahkim Vahdat statement read.

"In the universities they try to prevent any voice of dissent from being heard, many open-minded professors have been pensioned off or forced to resign, the politically active students expelled, and most of the student magazines forced to close," it added.

"Iranian students are flying the flag of resistance to this corrupt and repressive government, and do not intend to yield any ground to these forces are hoping that other sectors of society will join us in their battle because who sows wind, will reap a tempest" it concluded.